Not so lost in cambodia

Life continues to bring surprises here. I've gotten over my strange stomach illness thank goodness and have visited more places in Cambodia. I'm in the capital at the moment for the night and then we're jetting off tomorrow morning. Earlier this week we went to siem reap, which is a city in the north that is home to the ruins of Angkor Wat. The ruins were utterly amazing. Its like visiting the pyramids in Mexico but better because you can climb the temples as well as go inside them and explore. It was a lot of working climbing these ruins as it was about a billion degrees out and it was very very humid. The ferry ride to Siem Reap was also "adventurous"--they told us at the guesthouse (hostel) we were staying at that the ferry ride would be about 3 hours, however when we boarded the ferry not only did they overbook it so many people had to ride on the roof, the ferry ride was 6 hours in the blazing sun! We applied sunscreen but we were quite dehydrated and hungry and a bit toasty after getting off the ferry. When we got off the ferry we had to take an additional little boat to the "port", which was a nother half hour through a FLOATING VILLAGE! The half hour boat ride made the 6 hour ferry ride worth it. The river was filled with rubbish but people lived on it in floating houses that they moved around by attatching a smaller motorboat to the front. We passed many floating houses, smaller boats selling food, even floating basketball courts and schools. when we arrived to the "port" it was exactly what I pictured a small village in the middle of africa to look like. Lots of shanty houses on stilts, naked or barely clothed children, rubbish all over the ground and lots of interesting smells, and of course no paved roads. we had to take a 20 minute 3 wheeled motorised "taxi" called a tuk tuk to the town of Siem Reap and that was quite dusty and bumpy. I took video of the whole thing.

we stayed there for 2 days and then headed back to the captial to catch a bus to the south where the beach town of sihanoukville is. the bus ride to the capital was the worse bus ride I've ever ever been on. the air conditioner broke about 30 minutes into the 6+ hour bus ride and the temperature must have been near 90 F outside. It was horrible because the bus didn't have any windows and the bus was infested with mosquitos. I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion! when we arrived in the captial again, we had just missed the bus to the beach town as well as it being full. so we were approached by this character who told us we could take a shared van down to the beach town. we had done some thorough research on this, you can share a mini van down the Sihanoukville for about $6. so we accepted the offer and went around back of the bus station and boarded this mini van with some other cambodian people who stared at us the whole time. the van smelled like the inside of a smelly sock. the drive to the beach takes about 3.5 hours, however this shared van ride was another thing. the driver said that he had to pick up more people in order to be able to pay for gas all the way down to the beach we waited around for about an hour at this other part of the city for more people, it smelled like the inside of a rubbish bin there. very unpleasant. It became even more unpleasant when the van we were ridding was finally filled to over its maximum capacity--both inside with people, in the trunk area with backpacks, sacks of stuff, boxes, a giant motor that seemed like it belonged to a tractor or something and also on top of the van with wheelbarrows. It looked like one of those vans you see on tv in some poor foriegn countr with sack and sacks of stuff strapped to the top. In addition to the van being at its capacity it stopped all along the way to the beach to pick up and drop off people. Its kind of like a rural taxi of sorts. when it became dark and we finally arrived at the beach town 6 hours later and the driver proceeded to drive to some dodgy dark place at the port we became a bit concerned. the driver just ended up having to deliver the heaps of wheelbarrows attached to the roof. when he was delivering the stuff the workers at the port kept peering into the car as if we were animals in a cage. we were very releived when he dropped us off at our guesthouse and he went on his way.

that brings us to today, we stayed at the beach for 2 nights and 1 day and that was great. the first guesthouse we stayed at was only $4 but the bathroom looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in ages. It came complete with a mass of spider webbs over the light fixture. we're used to staying in not so nice accomodation without AC or hot water because we're on a tight budget and its part of the experience, but this place was too much. we payed an extra few dollars at booked into this hotel just down the street for $10 and ac and hot water. the bus ride to the capital was free of snafoos and had nice AC the whole time. the ride back to the captial is meant to take only 3.5 hours but again, nothing ever takes as long as they say and nothing ever seems the way it does--it took 5 hours.

tomorrow we head back to thailand to see the beaches of the south for 9 days. we are currently staying at a guesthouse for $4 a night--its missing the sink, I'm not sure whether it was stolen or they never put it in. Haha. But its all part of the adventure...I just had a wonderful dinner for $1 that came with a free mango shake. Yum.

NOTE: ignore the spelling mistakes, cambodian keyboard is psycho